In any case, we’ve pretty clearly reached the point where Trump’s assurances that everything is fine actually worsen the panic, because they demonstrate the depths of his delusions. Even as he was tweeting out praise for himself, global markets were in free-fall.
Never mind cratering stock prices. The best indicator of collapsing confidence is what is happening to interest rates, which have plunged almost as far and as fast as they did during the 2008 financial crisis. Markets are implicitly predicting not just a recession, but multiple years of economic weakness.
And at first I was tempted to say that our current situation is even worse than it was in 2008, because at least then we had leadership that recognized the seriousness of the crisis rather than dismissing it all as […]
Wednesday, March 11th, 2020
Heather Digby Parton, Contributing Writer - Salon
Stephan: This report describes an aspect of the Coronavirus evil circus that is not getting much coverage. Upon consideration, I suppose, it should not be surprising given that "Holier than thou" Mike Pence has been given command of the nation's response to the virus, and is doing about as bad a job with it as he did with the HIV crisis when he was governor.
A good reason for voting Democratic is getting rid of Pence who may be the lesser evil compared to criminal Trump, but it is only a matter of degree
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence prepares to speak at a briefing on the Trump administration’s coronavirus response in the press briefing room of the White House on March 04, 2020 in Washington, DC. Officials took questions on a range of issues related to the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. Also pictured is Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the CDC. Credit: Tasos Katopodis/Getty
If you’ve been following the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak, you probably saw at least some snippets of President Trump’s visit to the CDC last Friday. It will stand as one of the most astonishing appearances by this or any other president — and that’s saying something. When asked if he regretted firing the entire staff of the Office of Pandemic Preparation, Trump said, “This is something that you can never really think is going to happen.” He said that everyone who wants to be tested for this virus can get tested, which is not even close to true. He called Gov. Jay Inslee of […]
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Wednesday, March 11th, 2020
Brad Heath, Reporter - Reuters
Stephan: The thing that is really standing out for me about this virus pandemic is that as it stresses the systems of American society, it is revealing their flaws. The failure of the illness profit system. The failure to be prepared with test kits. The struggle to work out how workers who are affected can get paid sick leave. The extreme skew about how the virus is viewed as a result of disinformation. All of these trends have become obvious as the country faces this crisis.
You want to get a sense of how influential the Rightwing media disinformation machine is? Look no further than how Trumpers understand and are reacting to the Coronavirus compared with the rest of the country.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – – Americans who now find themselves politically divided over seemingly everything are now forming two very different views of another major issue: the dangers of the new coronavirus.
Democrats are about twice as likely as Republicans to say the coronavirus poses an imminent threat to the United States, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this week.
And more Democrats than Republicans say they are taking steps to be prepared, including washing their hands more often or limiting their travel plans.
Poll respondents who described themselves as Republicans and did not see the coronavirus as a threat said it still felt remote because cases had not been detected close to home and their friends and neighbors did not seem to be worried, either.
“I haven’t changed a single thing,” Cindi Hogue, who lives outside Little Rock, Arkansas, told Reuters. “It’s not a reality to me yet. It hasn’t become a threat enough yet in my world.”
Many of the U.S. cases that have been reported so far have been in Washington state and California, […]
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Wednesday, March 11th, 2020
Mark Mazzetti and Adam Goldman, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: Yet more evidence of the Trumplicans trying to rig the 2020 election.
Remember Eric Prince, brother of Betsy DeVos who is doing everything she can to crash American public education; he of the Blackwater mercenaries who became notorious for their human rights violations? Well, he's close to Trump and doing his best to undercut democracy to favor the Trumplican Party. Frankly, I think he ought to be prosecuted for what he is doing and sent to prison for it.
Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has at times served as an informal adviser to Trump administration officials.
Credit: Jeenah Moon/Reuters
WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, the security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda, according to interviews and documents.
One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union’s local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents show.
Using a different alias the next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the […]
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